The death of a gamer. Long live the gamer?

When I was young, I spent a lot of time playing video games. It started with the Atari 2600, and Frogger, Demon Attack, Combat, Space Invaders, Super Breakout, Defender, Centipede, No Escape, Air-Sea Battle, Pac-Man and, most excitingly for my young self, Pole Position. One of my best friends who lived next door also had one, and round his we would play Dig Dug and others. By today's standards it's laughably basic, but the games were endlessly addictive, although often frustrating. Another friend had a Commodore 64 (or possibly a ZX Spectrum, it was a long time ago and the memories are hazy), but we were unimpressed. That early rejection set a pattern for me - consoles over computers for games every time.

Whenever we went on holiday, I could usually be found playing the 2p coin-flip games or Outrun, and later Virtua Racing, Sega Rally and Daytona. As time moved on, my friend got an Amiga (I forget which type). My parents couldn't afford to buy me anything new, so I kind of forgot about playing computer games for a while.

Then something happened. During a visit to my cousins, we were shown the new console they had and the single game they had for it. The console was a Sega Mega Drive and the game was Sonic the Hedgehog. My 12 year old self was completely blown away. This was so far beyond my previous experience with the Atari 2600 it was difficult to comprehend. The way the little blue fella would get impatient and tap his foot if you made him wait too long. The gorgeous visuals. That insane rotating special stage. And the speed of it. The speed of it. I was smitten. I wanted one more than anything I had ever wanted before. Unfortunately my parents couldn't afford one, but I was nevertheless delighted with the Master System they got me. I played and played and played. Sonic the Hedgehog and Alex Kidd in Miracle World kept me in front of my TV in my bedroom for months on end.

Then, on one glorious Christmas morning, I was completely pole-axed by the Mega Drive I unwrapped. I reckon mom and dad must have got it second hand, but back then I was flabbergasted by it. A number of my school years were lost down a Mega Drive-shaped hole (I did enough to keep up, but I was often consumed by new games instead of homework). Countless hours simply disappeared, dedicated to cracking the games: Desert Strike, Flashback, Road Rash, Wonder Boy in Monster World, Ecco the Dolphin, Street Fighter II (for which I had somehow convinced my parents to fork out £100, including two new controllers) and many more. Weekends were lost in neighbourhood tournaments played on Mortal Kombat, Micro Machines and Virtua Racing (another extravagance on my parents' behalf, costing a whopping £70). I often won; there were few games I couldn't conquer relatively quickly. I was so proud of my copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and the fact that I was the only kid in my circle of friends to get a copy on the day of release that I took it in to school and put it on the corner of my desk for all to see.

At some point, Nintendo released the SNES. Some of my friends got one and a friendly but intense rivalry was struck up. I was firmly in Sega's camp. We had a better mascot - a supercool, superfast, superblue hedgehog versus some fat retarded plumber and his mate? We had more games - as the advert went, you had over 100 reasons to buy something 'mega', but only six to buy something 'super'. Who needed a gazillion different shades of green or the migraine-inducing 'Mode 7' bollocks when you had the playability and the speed? Take Street Fighter II; the SNES version looked and sounded a little prettier, but the Mega Drive version could move more than twice as fast. This is largely what my early 90s consisted of.

Then it started to go wrong. The next generation of consoles were coming. The Amiga CD32, the Atari Jaguar and Panasonic's 3DO amongst others. Sega developed add-ons for the Mega Drive - the Mega CD and the 32X. I wanted them. I asked for a Mega CD. I begged for one. I pleaded for one. I did not get one. On reflection, it was probably a good thing, but at the time I was pretty damn distressed - how could I keep up? I started to notice that the reviews the Mega CD games were getting were not particularly charitable, so I came to terms with not having one. Then came the Sega Saturn. Again, I wanted. Again, I was disappointed. Again, it was probably for the best in the long run.

I watched from the sidelines as Sega took on Sony's first crack at the console market only to get soundly beaten by the PlayStation. Sony couldn't even bother to design games - they left that to the third party developers. The Saturn was notoriously difficult to program for, while the PlayStation was much easier. The number of new releases that included a Saturn version dwindled and Sega disappeared from the industry they once, with Nintendo, dominated. Nintendo eventually entered the fray with the N64, and held their own where their once biggest rivals stuttered and died.

Sega tried again by releasing the first of the next generation of consoles in the Dreamcast. By now I didn't have to rely on my parents and bought one for myself. It was marvellous. Sonic Adventure bought Sega's mascot into the 3-D market and perfect versions of Sega's best arcade releases Crazy Taxi, Sega Rally and Daytona were wonderful to play at home. Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive 2 were hugely intricate considering the simple aim of beating the crap out of your opponent. Capcom released an exclusive chapter of their infamous Resident Evil series in Code: Veronica which genuinely scared the absolute crap out of me. Metropolis Street Racer was utterly revolutionary in that it allowed you to race in accurate versions of London and other major international cities, and it has since survived on other platforms as Project Gotham Racing. Most impressive of all was Sega's own Shenmue which cost millions to develop and was as engrossing as it was possible for a game to be back then. Set in Japan in the 1980s, you literally lived someone else's life as they hunted for their father's killers. It was so intricate that the day to day weather in the game matched the actual day to day weather in the part of Japan in which it was set at the time that it was set. If it rains in the game on, say, April 16th 1984 at about 2 in the afternoon, that means it rained in the same area of Japan at 2pm on April 16th 1984. I was smitten all over again. Internet access and the potential for future online gaming caused a buzz as well. It was not to be.

Everyone kind of expected the Dreamcast to wither and die when Sony released the PlayStation 2. And that's exactly what happened. For the second time, this corporate giant was waltzing in with a new console and slowly choking the life out of my dear Sega. The first time, with the pointless Mega Drive add-ons and awkward to program for Saturn, they probably deserved it, but the Dreamcast easily held its own against the PS2, but thanks to previous form never stood a chance. Bloody Sony and its bloody PlayStation. Thanks to the lessening of support from both developers and consumers, the Dreamcast lost the fight even before Nintendo entered with the GameCube and Microsoft came on board for the first time with the Xbox. Even they struggled against the overwhelming dominance of the PS2. Thanks to the first two incarnations of the PlayStation effectively destroying Sega in the console market, I have an irrational hate of PlayStations of all kinds. After this, Sega announced that they were developing no more consoles and were concentrating on game development only, and I decided that my gaming days would also come to an end. Sony had ruined it all for me. Although, to be honest, Sega kind of ruined it for themselves by destroying their reputation with the successive failures of the Mega CD, 32X and Saturn.

Nowadays, with the PS3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, gaming is no longer the domain of children and teenagers. The games are vast, intricate and cinematic in scope. Even Charlie Brooker likes them, and he hates almost everything. Sega's release of Bayonetta has recently peaked my interest, as has news of the forthcoming Sonic Generations (if only to relive some of the happiest times of my young life). In addition, the idea of blasting the crap out of someone on the other side of the world through my TV has a certain appeal. Back in the days of the Mega Drive, I used to be almost unbeatable at most games I played. How would I do against your average Italian gamer?

I've bought an Xbox 360. I think it might prove to be a waste of time and money for a number of reasons, not the least of which are my commitments to family and work, meaning I'll not have a great deal of time to play. Still, there's nothing wrong with reliving the memories of a pleasantly simple childhood, is there?